Christianity As Mystical Fact

THE SIGNIFICANCE of the Mysteries in the spiritual life of Greece can
be seen in Plato's conception of the world. There is only one means of
understanding him fully: he must be placed in the light which shines
forth from the Mysteries. The later pupils of Plato, the
Neoplatonists, attribute to him a secret teaching, to which he
admitted only those who were worthy, and then strictly under the seal
of silence. His teaching was considered secret in the same sense as
the Mystery wisdom. Even if Plato himself is not the author of the
seventh Platonic Epistle, as some people assert, this makes no
difference for our purpose; it need not concern us whether Plato or
someone else expresses the attitude of mind contained in this letter.
This attitude of mind was inherent in his conception of the world. It
says in this Epistle: But this much I can certainly declare
concerning all these writers, or prospective writers who claim to know
the subjects which I seriously study, whether as hearers of mine or of
other teachers, or from their own discoveries; it is impossible, in my
judgment at least, that these men understand anything about this
subject. There does not exist, nor will there ever exist, any treatise
of mine dealing therewith, for it does not at all admit of verbal
expression like other studies, but, as a result of continued
application to the subject itself and communion therewith, it is
brought to birth in the soul on a sudden, as light that is kindled by
a leaping spark, and thereafter it nourishes itself.
(see Note 30)
 These words could only indicate a powerlessness in the use of words
due to personal weakness, if one could not find in them the sense contained
in the Mysteries. What Plato never wrote and never intended to write
about must be something that defies expression in writing. It must be
a feeling, a sensation, an experience that cannot be conveyed in a
moment, but is attained through continued application ... and
communion. The intimate training Plato was able to give to the elect
is indicated here. For them fire flashed forth from his words; for the
others, only thoughts.  It is of great consequence how one approaches
Plato's Dialogues. They mean more or less according to one's frame of
mind. To Plato's pupils more than the mere literal sense of his
expositions was conveyed. Where he taught, the participants
experienced the atmosphere of the Mysteries. The words had overtones
which vibrated with them. But these overtones needed the atmosphere of
the Mysteries. Otherwise they died away unheard.

In the center of the world of Plato's Dialogues stands the personality
of Socrates. We need not touch on the historical aspect here. What
matters is the character of Socrates as represented by Plato. Socrates
is a person sanctified through death for the cause of truth. He died
as only an initiate can die, one to whom death is but a moment of life
like other moments. He meets death as any other occurrence of earthly
existence. His behavior was such that not even in his friends were the
feelings usual to such an occasion aroused. Phaedo says in the
Dialogue on the Immortality of the Soul: For my part, I had strange
emotions when I was there. For I was not filled with pity as I might
naturally be when present at the death of a friend; since he seemed to
me to be happy, both in his bearing and his words, he was meeting
death so fearlessly and nobly. And so I thought that even in going to
the abode of the dead he was not going without the protection of the
gods, and that when he arrived there it would be well with him, if it
ever was well with anyone. And for this reason I was not at all filled
with pity, as might seem natural when I was present at a scene of
mourning; nor on the other hand did I feel pleasure, as was our custom
when we were occupied with philosophy  although our talk was of
philosophy  but a very strange feeling came over me, an unaccustomed
mixture of pleasure and of pain together, when I thought that Socrates
was presently to die.
(see Note 31)
And the dying Socrates instructs his pupils
about immortality. His personality, knowing by experience the
valuelessness of life, here acts as proof of a quality very different
from all logic and intellectual reasoning. It is not as though a man
were conversing  for this man is at the point of crossing the threshold
of death  but as though the eternal truth itself which had made its
abode in a transitory personality, were speaking. Where the temporal
dissolves into nothingness we seem to find the air in which the
eternal can resound.

We hear no proofs of immortality in the logical sense. The whole
dialogue is directed toward leading the friends to the point where
they can behold the eternal. Then they will need no proofs. Is one to
prove that the rose is red to someone who sees it? Is one to prove
that the spirit is eternal to someone whose eyes have been opened so
that he can see this spirit?  Socrates indicates living experiences.
First of all it is a meeting with wisdom itself. What is the aim of
the person who pursues wisdom? He wishes to free himself from all that
his senses offer him in everyday observation. He wishes to seek the
spirit in the material world. Is not this a fact which can be compared
to dying? Other people  this is Socrates' opinion  are likely
not to be aware that those who pursue philosophy aright study nothing but
dying and being dead. Now if this is true, it would be absurd to be
eager for nothing but this all their lives, and then to be reluctant
when that came for which they had been eagerly practicing all along.
(see Note 32)
To reinforce this, Socrates asks one of his friends,
Do you think a philosopher would be likely to care much about the
so-called pleasures, such as eating or drinking? ... Or about the
pleasures of sexual desire? ... Do you believe such a man would
think much of the other cares of the body  I mean such as the
possession of fine clothes and shoes and the other personal
adornments? Do you think he would care about them or despise them,
except so far as it is necessary to have them? ... Altogether, then,
you think that such a man would not devote himself to the body, but
would, so far as he was able, turn away from the body and concern
himself with the soul? ... To begin with, then, it is clear that in
such matters the philosopher, more than other men, separates the soul
from association with the body
(see Note 33)
After this Socrates is
entitled to say: Striving for wisdom is comparable to dying, in that
man turns from physical things. But where does he turn? He turns to
the spiritual. However, can he expect the same of the spirit as of his
senses? Socrates explains himself on this: Now, how about the
acquisition of intelligent insight? Is the body a hindrance or not, if
it is made to share in the search for wisdom? What I mean is this:
Have the sight and hearing of men any truth in them, or is it true, as
the poets are always telling us, that we neither hear nor see
accurately? ... Then, when does the soul attain to truth? For when
it tries to consider anything in company with the body, it is
evidently deceived by it.
All that we perceive with
(see Note 34)
the physical senses comes into existence and dies away. And this
coming into existence and dying away is the cause of our being
deceived. But if we examine objects more thoroughly with intelligent
insight, then we partake of the eternal in them. But the physical
senses do not convey to us the eternal in its true form. They deceive
us when we rely implicitly upon them. They cease to deceive us if we
confront them with logical insight, making everything conveyed by the
senses subject to examination by this insight. But if logical insight
is to judge the statements of the senses, must not something live
within this insight which transcends the perceptions of the senses?
Hence what is true and false in objects is judged by something in us
which opposes the material body, and therefore is not subject to its
laws. Above all, this something must not be subjected to the laws of
growth and decay, for it bears truth within itself. Truth cannot have
a yesterday and a tomorrow; it cannot be this on one occasion and that
on another, as material things are. Hence truth in itself must be
eternal. As the philosopher turns away from the transitory material
world, and turns to truth, he approaches an eternal element, dwelling
within him. If we immerse ourselves wholly in the spirit, then we live
entirely in truth. The material world around us is no longer present
in its material form only. Would not that man, asks Socrates, do
this most perfectly who approaches each thing, so far as possible,
with the reason alone, not introducing sight into his reasoning nor
dragging in any of the other senses along with his thinking, but who
employs pure, absolute reason in his attempt to search out the pure,
absolute essence of things, and who removes himself, so far as
possible, from eyes and ears, and, in a word, from his whole body
because he feels that its companionship disturbs the soul and hinders
it from attaining truth and wisdom? ... Well, then, this that we
call death, is it not a release and separation from the body? But, as
we hold, the true philosophers and they alone are always most eager to
release the soul, and just this  the release and separation of the soul
from the body  is their study ... Then, as I said in the beginning, it
would be absurd if a man who had been all his life fitting himself to
live as nearly in a state of death as he could, should then be
disturbed when death came to him ... In fact, then, the true
philosophers practice dying, and death is less terrible to them than
to any other men.
(see Note 35)
Socrates also bases all
higher morality on the liberation of the soul from the body. One who
obeys only the demands of his body is not moral. Who has courage? asks
Socrates. He has courage who not only disregards his body but follows
the demands of his spirit when this endangers his body. And who is
self-restrained? He who is not excited by the passions and in being
superior to them acts in a seemly way. Is self-restraint therefore not
a characteristic of those alone who despise the body and pass their
lives in philosophy?
(see Note 36)
And thus it is with all virtues, according to Socrates.

Socrates proceeds to characterize intelligent insight itself. What
does cognition really mean? Doubtless we attain cognition through
forming judgments. Very well, I form a judgment about something; for
instance, I say to myself, This thing that stands before me is a tree.
How do I arrive at such a statement? I shall be able to do so only if
I already know what a tree is. I must remember my idea of a tree. A
tree is a material thing. If I remember a tree, I remember a material
object. I say that a thing is a tree if it reminds me of other things
I have perceived before, and which I know to be trees. Memory enables
me to reach cognition. Through memory I can compare the various
material things with each other. But in this my cognition is not
exhausted. If I see two similar things I form the judgment, These
things are similar. But in reality two things are never completely
similar. Wherever I find similarity it is only relative. Therefore I
think of similarity without finding it in material realty. The thought
of similarity helps me toward judgment, as memory helps me toward
judgment and cognition. Just as I remember trees when I see a tree, so
I remember the thought of similarity when I see two similar things.
Therefore thoughts arise within me like memories which are not gained
from material reality. All cognition not derived from this reality is
based on such thoughts. The whole of mathematics consists only of such
thoughts. It would be a poor geometrician who could relate
mathematically only what he sees with his eyes and grasps with his
hands. It follows that we have thoughts which do not stem from
transitory nature, but which arise from the spirit. And precisely
these thoughts bear the stamp of eternal truth upon them. What
mathematics teaches will be eternally true, even if the whole universe
were to collapse tomorrow, and a totally new one arise. The present
mathematical truths might not be applicable to the conditions
prevailing in a new universe, nevertheless they would remain true in
themselves. Only when the soul is alone with itself can it bring forth
such eternal truths out of itself. The soul therefore is related to
truth, to the eternal, and not to the transitory, the seemingly real.
For this reason Socrates says, When the soul reflects alone by
itself, it departs into the realm of the pure, the everlasting, the
immortal and the changeless, and being akin to these, it dwells always
with them whenever it is by itself and is not hindered, and it has
rest from its wanderings and remains always the same and unchanging
with the changeless, since it is in communion therewith. And this
state of the soul is called wisdom ... Then see, if this is not the
conclusion from all that we have said, that the soul is most like the
divine and immortal and intellectual and uniform and indissoluble and
ever unchanging, and the body, on the contrary, most like the human
and mortal and multiform and unintellectual and dissoluble and
ever-changing ...Then if it is in such a condition, the soul goes away
into what is like itself, into the invisible, divine, immortal and
wise, and when it arrives there it is happy, freed from error, folly,
fear, fierce loves and all the other human ills and, as the initiated
say, lives in truth through all after-time with the gods.
(see Note 37)
Here we cannot undertake to show all the
paths along which Socrates guides his friends to the eternal. All
these paths breathe the same spirit. All are intended to show that man
finds one thing when he follows the paths of transitory sense
perception, and another when his spirit is alone with itself. Socrates
points to the archetypal nature of the spirit for those who listen to
him. If they find it they can see with spiritual eyes that it is
eternal. The dying Socrates does not prove immortality: he simply
demonstrates the essence of the soul. It then becomes evident that
growth and decay, birth and death have nothing to do with this soul.
The essence of the soul lies in truth, but truth itself cannot grow
and decay. The soul has as much to do with growth as the crooked has
to do with the straight. Death, however, belongs to this process of
growth. Therefore the soul has nothing to do with death. Must we not
say that the immortal assumes mortality as little as the straight
assumes crookedness. Continuing from this, Socrates says, If the
immortal is also imperishable, it is impossible for the soul to perish
when death comes to meet it. For, as our argument has shown, it will
not admit death and will not be dead, just as the number three, we
said, will never be even.
(see Note 38)

Let us trace the whole development of this dialogue, in which Socrates
leads his listeners to the point where they are able to see the
eternal in the human personality. The listeners absorb his thoughts;
they search within themselves for something in their own inner
experiences through which they can say yes to his ideas. They put
forward the objections that spring to their minds. What has happened
to the listeners when the dialogue has reached its end? They have
found something in themselves which they did not possess before. They
have not merely absorbed an abstract truth; they have gone through a
process of development. Something has come to life within them which
was not alive in them before. Is not this comparable to an initiation?
Does not this throw light on the reason why Plato expressed his
philosophy in the form of dialogue? These dialogues are intended to be
nothing but a literary form of the proceedings in the Mystery places.
What Plato himself says at various points convinces us of this. As a
teacher of philosophy, Plato wanted, insofar as possible through this
medium, to be what the initiator was in the Mysteries. Well does Plato
know himself to be at one with the methods of the Mysteries! He
considers his method to be the right one only if it leads to the place
to which the mystic should be led! He expresses this in the Timaeus:
All men who possess even a small share of good sense call upon God
always at the outset of every undertaking, be it small or great: we
therefore who are purposing to deliver a discourse concerning the
Universe, how far it is created or is uncreated, must needs invoke
gods and goddesses (if so be that we are not utterly demented),
praying that all we say may be approved by them in the first place,
and secondly by ourselves.
(see Note 39)
And to those who
seek along such a path, Plato promises that the Godhead, as Savior,
makes it possible that such a distant and difficult investigation  one
so prone to error  can be accomplished through an enlightened
philosophy.
(see Note 40)

The Timaeus in particular reveals to us the relationship of Plato's
world conception with the Mysteries. At the very beginning of this
dialogue, reference is made to an initiation. Solon is initiated
into the creation of worlds by an Egyptian priest, and also into the
manner in which myths that have been handed down, express eternal
truths in picture form. There have been and there will be many and
divers destructions of mankind, (thus the Egyptian priest instructs
Solon) of which the greatest are by fire and water, and lesser ones
by countless other means. For in truth the story that is told in your
country as well as in ours, how once upon a time Phaethon, son of
Helios, yoked his father's chariot, and, because he was unable to
drive it along the course taken by his father, burnt up all that was
upon the earth and himself perished by a thunderbolt -that story, as
it is told, has the fashion of a legend, but the truth of it lies in
the occurrence of a shifting of the bodies in the heavens which move
round the earth, and a destruction of the things on the earth by
fierce fire, which recurs at long intervals.
(see Note 41)
 This point in the Timaeus clearly refers to the relationship
between the initiate and the myths of the people. He perceives the
truths hidden in their pictures.

The drama of the world's creation is presented in the Timaeus. Whoever
wishes to retrace the paths leading to this creation comes to the
point of divining the archetypal force from which everything has
sprung. Now to discover the Maker and Father of this Universe were a
task indeed; and having discovered Him, to declare Him unto all men
were a thing impossible.
(see Note 42)
The mystic knew what
was meant by this thing impossible. It indicates the drama of God.
God is not present for him in the materially comprehensible world.
There He is present as nature. He lies spell-bound in nature.
According to the ancient mystics, only he can approach Him who awakens
the divine within himself. Therefore He cannot so easily be made
comprehensible to everyone. He does not appear in person, even to
those who approach Him. This is what the Timaeus says. The Father has
created the world out of the cosmic body and the cosmic soul. In
perfect proportions He has united harmoniously the elements which came
into being when He offered His own, separate existence by diffusing
Himself. Thus the body of the world came into existence. On this body
of the world, the soul of the world is stretched in the form of a
cross.
(see Note 43)
This soul is the divine element in the world. It has met with
death on the cross in order that the world may exist. Plato is able to
call nature the tomb of the divine element.
(see Note 44)
This is not a tomb
containing something dead, but something eternal, for which death only
gives the opportunity to express the omnipotence of life. Man sees
this nature in the right light when he approaches it in order to
deliver the crucified soul of the world. It must be raised from death,
the spell must be lifted from it. Where can it come to life again?
Only in the soul of the man who is initiated. In this way wisdom finds
its right relationship to the cosmos. The resurrection, the
deliverance of the Godhead: this is cognition. The evolution of the
world from the least to the most perfect is traced in the Timaeus. An
ascending process is represented. The beings develop. God reveals
Himself in this development. The process of creation is a resurrection
of God from the tomb. Man makes his appearance in this stream of
evolution. Plato shows that with man something special has arrived.
True, the whole world is divine. And man is no more divine than the
other beings. But in the other beings God is concealed, and in man He
is manifest. The end of the Timaeus reads: And now at length we may
say that our discourse concerning the Universe has reached its
termination. For this our Cosmos has received the living creatures
both mortal and immortal and been thereby fulfilled; it being itself a
visible Living Creature embracing the visible creatures, a perceptible
God made in the image of the Intelligible, most great and good and
fair and perfect in its creation  even this one and only begotten
world.
(see Note 45)

But this one and only begotten world would be incomplete if it did not
have among its images the image of the Creator Himself. Only out of
the soul of man can this image be born. It is not the Father Himself
who can be born of man, but the Son, the offspring of God living in
the soul, who is like unto the Father.

Philo of whom it was said that he was Plato reborn, called the wisdom
born of man, the Son of God;
(see Note 46)
this wisdom lives in the soul and contains the intelligence that exists in
the world. This world-intelligence, the Logos, appears as the book in which
has been inscribed and engraved the formation of the world.
(see Note 47)
Further it appears as the Son of God, who followed the ways of his Father,
and shaped the different kinds, looking to the archetypal patterns which
that Father supplied.
(see Note 48)
In the manner of Plato, Philo speaks of this Logos
as the Christ: For since God is the first and sole King of the
universe, the road leading to Him, being a king's road, is rightly
called royal. This road you must take to be philosophy ... the
philosophy which the ancient circle of ascetics pursued in hard-fought
contest, eschewing the soft enchantments of pleasure, engaged with a
fine severity in the study of what is good and fair. This royal road
then, which we have just said to be true and genuine philosophy, is
called in the Law, the utterance and word of God.
(see Note 49)

Philo experiences this as an initiation when he sets forth on the path
to meet the Logos who is, for him, the Son of God. I feel no shame in
recording my own experience, a thing I know from its having happened
to me a thousand times. On some occasions, after making up my mind to
follow the usual course of writing on philosophical tenets, and
knowing definitely the substance of what I was to set down, I have
found my understanding incapable of giving birth to a single idea, and
have given up without accomplishing anything, reviling my
understanding for its self-conceit, and filled with amazement at the
might of Him Who is, to Whom is due the opening and closing of the
womb of the soul. On other occasions, I have approached my work empty
and suddenly become full, the ideas falling in a shower from above and
being sown invisibly, so that under the influence of the divine
possession I have been filled with corybantic frenzy and been
unconscious of anything, place, persons present, myself, words spoken,
lines written. For I obtained language, ideas, an enjoyment of light,
keenest vision, pellucid distinctness of objects, such as might be
received through the inner eye as the result of clearest cognition.
(see Note 50)
 This is the description of a path to cognition which is so arranged
that whoever takes this path is conscious that he becomes one with the
divine when the Logos comes to life within him. This is clearly
expressed in the words: When the mind is mastered by the love of the
divine, when it strains its powers to reach the inmost shrine, when it
puts forth every effort and ardor on its forward march, under the
divine impelling force it forgets all else, forgets itself and fixes
its thoughts and memories on Him alone Whose attendant and servant it
is, to Whom it dedicates incense, the incense of consecrated virtues.
(see Note 51)
 For Philo there are only two paths. Either man can pursue the
material world which is offered by perception and intellect, but then
he is limited to his own personality, he withdraws from the cosmos; or
he can become conscious of the all-embracing cosmic powers,
experiencing the eternal within his personality. One who runs away
from God takes refuge in himself. There are two minds, that of the
universe, which is God, and the individual mind. One who flees from
his own mind flees for refuge to the Mind of all things. For one who
abandons his own mind acknowledges all that makes the human mind its
standard to be naught, and he refers all things to God. On the other
hand, one who runs away from God declares Him to be the cause of
nothing, and himself to be the cause of all things that come into being.
(see Note 52)

Plato's world-conception aims to be a form of cognition which in its
whole nature is religion. It brings cognition into relationship with
the highest man can reach through his feelings. Plato allows cognition
to be valid only when it completely satisfies man's feelings. Then it
is not pictorial knowledge; it is the content of life. It is a higher
man in man. The personality is but an image of this higher man. In man
himself the superior, the archetypal man is born. And with this
another secret of the Mysteries is expressed in Plato's philosophy.
The Church Father Hippolytus points to this secret: This is
the great and ineffable mystery of the Samothracians (the guardians of a
particular Mystery-cult) which it is permissible only for the
initiated to know. For the Samothracians expressly hand down, in the
Mysteries that are celebrated among them, that Adam is the archetypal man.
(see Note 53)

Plato's dialogue on love, the Symposium, also describes an
initiation. Here love appears as the herald of wisdom. If wisdom,
the Eternal Word (Logos), is the Son of the Eternal Creator of the
world, then love has a maternal relationship with this Logos. Before
it is possible for even a spark of the light of wisdom to light up in
the human soul, there must be an unconscious longing, which draws the
soul toward the divine. Man must be drawn unconsciously toward that
which, when raised into consciousness, subsequently brings him supreme
joy. What Heraclitus designates as the daemon
(See Note in Chapter 3)
in man is united with the idea of love.  In the Symposium men of
the most varied status, possessing the most varied views on life, speak of
love; the man in the street, the politician, the scientist, the poet of comedy,
Aristophanes and the serious poet, Agathon. Each has his conception of
love according to how he experiences life. How they express themselves
reveals the stage at which their daemon stands
(See Note in Chapter 3).
Through love one being is drawn to another. The manifold variety of
things into which the divine unity is diffused strives through love
toward oneness and harmony. Love therefore has a divine quality. Hence
each man is capable of understanding it only insofar as he has
partaken of this divine quality. After these men, representing varying
stages of maturity, have declared their views on love, Socrates takes
up the discussion. He considers love from the viewpoint of a thinker
capable of cognition. For him love is not a god. But it is something
leading man to God. Eros, love, is no god for him. God is perfect, and
therefore possesses beauty and goodness. But Eros is only the longing
for beauty and goodness. Therefore he stands between man and God. He
is a daemon, a mediator between the earthly and the divine. 
It is significant that Socrates does not pretend to give his thoughts when
he speaks about love. He says he is only recounting a revelation about
it, which a woman gave him. He has conceived an idea of love's nature
through mantic art.
(See Author's Comments)
The priestess Diotima awakened in
Socrates the daemonic force which was to lead him to the divine. She
initiated him.  This passage in the Symposium is
most revealing. We must ask, Who is this wise woman who awakens
the daemon in Socrates? We should not think of mere poetic fantasy here. No
actual wise woman could have awakened the daemon in the soul if the force for
this awakening were not within the soul itself. We must seek this wise
woman in the soul of Socrates himself. There must, however, be a
basis which allows what brings the daemon to birth in the soul to
appear as a being in external reality. This force cannot work in the
same way as the forces we can observe in the soul as belonging to it
and at home with it. We see that it is the force of the soul before it
has received wisdom, which Socrates represents as the wise woman.
It is the maternal principle which gives birth to the Son of God,
Wisdom, the Logos. The unconscious force of the soul is presented as a
feminine element, which allows the divine to enter consciousness. The
soul which as yet lacks wisdom is the mother of what leads to the
divine. This leads us to an important idea of mysticism. The soul is
recognized as the mother of the divine. With the inevitability of a
natural force it unconsciously leads man toward the divine. 
This point throws light on the conception held in the Mysteries regarding
Greek mythology. The world of the gods is born in the soul. Man regards as
his gods what he himself creates in the form of pictures
(see Note in Chapter 2).
But he must progress to another idea. He must transform into
pictures of the gods the divine force present in himself which is
active before the creation of these pictures of the gods. The mother
of the divine appears behind the divine, and this is none other than
the original force in the human soul. Man places goddesses beside his
gods. Let us look at the myth of Dionysus in the light of the above.
Dionysus is the son of Zeus and a mortal mother, Semele. Zeus tears
the premature infant from the mother as she lies slain by lightning,
keeping him in his own thigh until he is mature. Hera, the mother of
the gods, stirs up the Titans against Dionysus. They dismember the
boy. But Pallas Athene rescues the still beating heart and brings it
to Zeus. Thereupon Zeus begets the son for the second time. In this
myth we have an exact description of a process which takes place in
the depths of the human soul. Whoever wishes to speak in the sense of
the Egyptian priest who instructs Solon about the nature of a myth
could speak as follows: What you tell us, that Dionysus, the son of a
god and a mortal mother, is dismembered and is born again, may sound
like a fable, but what is true about it is the birth of the divine and
its destiny in the human soul. The divine unites with the
temporal-earthly soul of man. As soon as this divine element,
Dionysus, comes to life, the soul experiences a great longing for its
true spiritual status. The consciousness which once again appears in
the image of a female divinity, Hera, is jealous of the birth out of a
better consciousness. It stirs up the lower nature of man  the Titans.
The child of god, still immature, is dismembered. It is present in man
as a dismembered material-intellectual science. But if in man
sufficient higher wisdom (Zeus) is at work, it cherishes and cares for
the immature child, which then is born again as the second son of god
(Dionysus). Thus out of science, out of the dismembered divine force
in man, is born the harmonizing wisdom, which is the Logos, the son of
God and of a mortal mother, who is the transitory soul of man striving
unconsciously for the divine. We are far from the spiritual reality
represented in all this as long as we see in it only a mere process of
the soul and take it as a picture of this process. In this spiritual
reality the soul does not merely experience something within itself;
it is completely disconnected from itself and participates in a cosmic
process which in truth takes place outside itself and not within it.

Platonic wisdom and Greek mythology unite; so, equally, do Mystery
wisdom and mythology. The gods that they created were the objects of
the religion of the people; the history of their coming into existence
was the secret of the Mysteries. No wonder that it was accounted
dangerous to betray the Mysteries. This meant betraying
the origin of the gods of the people. And the right understanding of this
origin is wholesome; misunderstanding is destructive.